


Apotheosis

by embolalia



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Backstory for Razor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7259974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can see the inside of every moment in every place at once: his mother’s laugh, his body’s death, the growth of the first tree, the last blade of grass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apotheosis

**I**  
  
Even beyond memory, beyond the divisions of time that keep the past from the present, he lives in that day.  
  
A small boy, his eyes dark and wide with awe, he strained to see everything as his mother led him into the chambers of the oracle Dione. They spoke in hushed tones for a while, and he stared in wonder at the richness of the space: the heady incense, the shimmering fabrics draped from ceiling to floor. While his mother looked away, Zeke reached out and touched the curtain. His heart beat faster at the proof that it was real. He was amazed but not surprised; he had seen all this before.  
  
His mother left then, pressing a kiss to his forehead and promising to stay near.  
  
The oracle smiled at him serenely, gestured for him to sit opposite her on the rug that covered the floor. Zeke knelt.   
  
“Your mother tells me you have dreams,” she said, her voice echoing strangely. “That you foresaw the burning of a neighbor’s house.”  
  
He dropped his chin quickly, nodding. “I’ve seen it fall,” he whispered urgently, the secret he’d been saving for as long as he could remember. “All of it. Everywhere. The shipyards and courts and buildings and oceans all on fire--”  
  
The oracle went white, her eyes afraid. “Enough,” she gasped. She stared at him for a long time.   
  
“What do you see?” Zeke finally asked.  
  
Her face tightened as if in pain. “I see you, Ezekiel, and the role you will play. You will see more than any human ever has, the beauty and perfection of the universe.” She was crying and he didn’t know why.  
  
The oracle rose then and bathed her tears away in a basin. Then she led him back to his mother. He was a child, Dione promised her. She had nothing to fear; in adulthood he might have a gift, might be an oracle. When he was of age he could return.  
  
Zeke watched them speak, and forgave her lies and omissions, for he had his own. He had seen her, crushed beneath the temple as the city fell. Though as she raised her hand to him in farewell, he thought she might have seen it, too.  
  
His mother held his hand tightly as they walked through the crowds of passersby toward the bullet train that would take them home. On the other side of the street, phalanxes of Centurions paraded toward whichever construction site or factory they’d been assigned. Zeke stopped to watch them, and wondered what they knew of their future.

  
 **II**  
  
It is strange, once he sees every angle of every moment, how much he didn’t understand. From a distance he watches the Fall, the war, the Centurions approaching, and wonders at how small his mind was, then.  
  
They came nine years into the war, when Ezekiel was seventeen years old, and carried him away. The Centurions’ claws sliced into his arms as they dragged him into their ship, a maze of blank metal, but he was dazed from chamalla and felt nothing. Even as they touched him, he could see faces shifting beneath their metal skin, the eyes of a young girl staring back at him. Then he was thrown to the floor and the world went dark.  
  
When he woke each morning, he took stock of the others. They came and went; in three years none lasted more than a few months. Despite his age they looked for him for comfort, to guide their prayers and see what he could. They needed Gods and he was an oracle.  
  
The tests happened every few days, measurements of strength and weight and endurance of pain. Their purpose was opaque to him, lost in the twists of reality. He knew the others were dead but not why he lived.  
  
In between tests, he dreamt. Some dreams were pure chaos, the reality of the war going on somewhere outside the cold walls of the cell. Other times he dreamt of Dione’s words, of the perfection of the universe.   
  
Then Lucy stepped into their cage. It seemed somehow that Ezekiel had seen her a million times, even if he’d never recognized her face.  
  
She was no more than eight years old, but when she nodded to him, he couldn’t help smiling. Lucy held out her hand, clarity in her eyes.  
  
He couldn’t protect her, but she came back unharmed. While Lucy rested afterward, she told him about her own visions, about seeing the Cylons take her every night since she was a child and never convincing her family it was real. Ezekiel told her in turn about his own prophecies, about the angel who would end the cycle.  
  
After Lucy no more new prisoners arrived. The rest vanished one by one over the months that followed until only the two of them remained.  
  
When the Centurions came for Ezekiel one morning, Lucy began to cry, to scream at them, and he knew she’d seen something he hadn’t, something that came next.  
  
He knelt beside her, hugged her close as metal fingers closed around his shoulder. “All time is one,” he whispered in her ear, “It’s already over. Love outlasts death.” He held onto her tightly.  
  
“May the Gods guard you,” she whispered back, and let go.  
  
This test was not like the others. They scanned his brain as before but then the scalpels and lasers came out, resetting pathways, exposing structures, expanding his mind and impelling it with wires and cords to become something new.  
  
He became something new.  
  
  
 **III**  
  
Time has no meaning.  
  
It is beyond prophecy, beyond dream. His mind is spilled out across the galaxy, filling it, containing it.  
  
He can see the cycles, the truth of peace and war and peace spiraling like galaxies and never ceasing. He can see the inside of every moment in every place at once: his mother’s laugh, his body’s death, the growth of the first tree, the last blade of grass.  
  
The deaths of the others he has known are like needles in his side, strung out through the past and the present, a tattoo across the universe, but no sooner can he think of destroying the Cylons than he sees them, too: their pain, the shining of their souls inside metal bodies, their flickering thoughts of life beyond slavery. The story of a thousand wars, a million cycles.  
  
With a flare of light he is drawn into one moment, into Lucy becoming what he has become. Her presence, surging into the universe with him, fills him with delight. She multiplies, she is a multitude. She sails through the stars a thousand times over.  
  
In the distance, always, he can feel the ship, an extension of the body he has almost forgotten, a function of the wires and tools that unleashed his mind.  
  
In that other limited place, words spill from his lips, and the Centurions are entranced. He knows now of the others before him: those whose minds were too small to contain galaxies, who died in pain, untransformed. One Centurion kneels before him as Ezekiel chants the truths of storms and orchestras. It says nothing. He can feel her soul, all their souls.  
  
In every moment the battlestar is approaching, bringing his death, bringing the angel who is not yet an angel. His eyes open at the last, spilling out the secrets of the universe transmuted back into prophecy. Kara Thrace is the harbinger of death, he tells Kendra, meaning his death, meaning hers. Meaning that the universe is about to end and become something new. Apocalyse. Apotheosis.  
  
He has always lived in this moment.


End file.
